Students Leader Urges Education Minister To Be Proactive
…begs him to Prepare ahead of time
By Lazarus Zakaa
The National speaker of the Nigerian Students Parliament (NSP); Rt.Hon. Mubarak Aliyu Rimi have called on the honourable minister of Education; Hon. Adamu Adamu to set up a national committee for online learning.
The students speaker said lunching of Online system of learning in Nigeria as an improvise to our normal method of knowledge acquisition can’t yield a good result over night if not well planned.
Mubarak said online learning is a type of E-learning that depends entirely on internet-based resources and support system, E-learning requires certain behavioural changes and regulatory adjustments in order to make it work for the learner.
” It cannot be run by mere wishful directive and fire brigade fiat but through careful and detailed planning, funding and training by those involved”
“None of these have been done by neither the federal ministry of Education nor the University authorities in Nigeria, the infrastructure to run it is scarce and the few seen in some campuses are not internet enabled and have no electricity to power them.”
Still speaking, Rt.Hon. Mubarak expressed worries that students that are suppose to sit for National Examinations such as NECO may not be able to sit for the exams if the government fails to fix modalities that will have the students write such exams online from their homes.
” The federal ministry of Education should put in place an effective online library system with E-resources and seamless access from across the globe.”He said.
The NSP national speaker called on the honourable minister of Education to put in place a committee that will ensure that both learners and facilitators have seamless access to the internet and must be attuned to the new environment and culture of learning. Requisite planning and training must have been done before it’s late because we all can’t tell how long the trauma of this ugly pandemic will last.
“Our leaders must understand that Internet access is variable across geo-political regions, same way linguistic and cultural parameters are highly different. One size fits all approach is ludicrous. Moreover, sustainable technologies should be the factor in determining the approach to E-learning not the excitement from improperly digested information from too much education tourism. All these requires proper planning and the time is now as there is no single University in Nigeria today that operates a mix-mode system of learning ( when students have option to take courses online or face to face). To seek to transit therefore to online delivery will amount to taking a plunge”, Rt.Hon. Mubarak expressed.
Our Nigerian Education system had been raped and defrauded for many years in the past by federal agencies who dump substandard computers in our universities from time to time at the end of the year to justify last minute plundering of national resources in the name of supporting E-learning without providing internet facilities on campus for us, not to talk of how we students are forced to contribute monies for fuel used to run generators in school. It’s time for the honourable minister of Education to swing into action to safe Nigerian students from ravaging idol mind syndrome, Mubarak exclaimed.
